“Fine”. Fine is a word with so many meanings. How was I supposed to know what they meant?

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1

It all started a foggy, and quite dreary, Monday morning. I got up 5:45 sharp, stumbled to my closet and rummaged around to find any old t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants, my usual apparel. After dressing myself in what I call “school clothes” I stomped roughly down our worn and very creaky steps to the kitchen in search for anything to fill my intestines before barely catching my big, fat, yellow bus.

On the bus, I caught up with some of my friends, talked, and got the answers to my homework from the night before. At 6:30 we arrived at school. I headed for my locker, number 133. I got to my locker and dialed my combination. As I opened my beat-up, worn-out, and ugly locker, I watched as every book and binder from exploratory to literature cascaded to the ground and lay in a heap.

I was late to my first class, exploratory, as usual, and received another demerit by hall patrol. As I sat down in my cold square desk, I noticed the teacher being absent of the room.

I thought to myself,” What a perfect opportunity to cause some chaos, but how?” Then it came to me,” Yes! That’s it!”

Carefully I observed the room for any snitches, luckily there were none, well except for Bobby Long, but I could take care of him. Now to start some trouble. I crept behind the mahogany desk, keeping an eye on our class blabbermouth. When it looked somewhat safe, I took to action! I approached the gray, outdated, laptop in need of a good dusting and opened it up, praying that it wouldn’t squeak.

“Yes!”

He left his grading tab open.

“Now to just change some of these F’s to… how about a B. Yeah!” I thought to myself, “Now I just have to act like I don’t know anything has changed.”

But to just my luck Mrs. Blakeslee walked in just as I closed the tab, that woman could smell trouble from three rooms away.

“And just what are you doing Miss Warren?”, Mrs. Blakeslee asked.

“Mr. Cort told me to…”I paused trying to conjure up some alibi, “find the stapler to staple our project from last Friday, but I’m having some trouble finding it.”, I responded.

” You say you were having a hard time finding the stapler?”

“Yes mam”

The moment I responded I knew I was busted because sitting right on the front of Mr. Cort’s desk was, the stapler.

“But Miss Warren” she said with a sly grin, “the stapler is right there”

“Umm, you see… That one is out of staples”

” But I’m pretty sure I surveyed Mr. Cort refilling it, this morning. Is it out of staples already?” She said sarcastically.

She clicked the stapler once with her long, skrawny finger(the one that was about to point me in the direction of the office). When the stapler popped back up, a shiny, sinuous, aluminum staple sat in the bottom groove of the stapler.

“Office! Now! And no exceptions Miss Warren!”

“But it was jammed earlier! How was I to know?”

“I said NO exceptions! NOW!”

Off I dawdled to the office taking a detour to my locker ( I knew they would just send me straight back up to it to gather my things) and stopping by all my classes to get my assignments for the next week or so, even though I had no plans to complete any work assigned. I already knew what he would say, “Miss Warren, again? Suspension for one week.As I moped to the office, I ran into one of my friends, Chris. He had ebony hair that brushed his eyebrows, his skin was tan, and he was wearing his favorite Auburn hat (I could have pester him all day for that). He was pretty much the male version of me(besides the whole Auburn thing).

“Hey, what are you doing in the hallways right now? May I guess skipping?” he questioned me.

“No, not skipping. That beast Mrs. Blakeslee, just happened to walk in while I was changing a couple of my grades.”

” What? You tried to change your grades!?! Way to go!”

” Nothing big.” I laughed because I knew he wouldn’t believe that, “Just from an F to a B” I said with a smirk on my face.

“Dang! Have fun explaining that one to Mr. Morton”

We both laughed.

“Yeah I’m headed up there now, it’ll probably be another week before I’m back here. But that’s okay, I don’t want to be here anyways.”

“Look at you being optimistic!”

“I know. See you later if my mom doesn’t kill me!”

I gave him a nice goodbye punch on the arm and walked off.

I kept on my short journey to the office.

“Aaah, Miss Warren, back again are we?” Mr. Morton said sneering,” Well, You know the drill. Go sit in my office, I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t touch anything!”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I retorted

I waited a few minutes in his rather small, dull office. He then came in, sat at his desk, and stared at me a few moments as if he were trying to read my mind.

“So, Miss Warren, what are you in for today”

“I don’t know! I was looking for Mr. Cort’s stapler to staple our project and Mrs. Blakeslee walked in and accused me of doing something!”

“Mhmm, yes. For some odd reason I feel like this isn’t what really happened, is it?”

“It is!” I retorted loudly.

“Yes I see, so if I go up to Mr. Cort’s room right now, I won’t find a stapler. Is that right?”

So annoyed at the moment, I knew that there was no use in dragging this thing out longer that necessary, because apparently he wasn’t believing a word of what I was saying.

“Fine then. No, I wasn’t looking for Mr. Cort’s stapler. I was changing my grades. Are you happy now? And it’s his own fault, anyone could have done it, he had left his grading tab open! How stupid is that?”

“Ah! There we go, and the truth comes out.” He sat there smiling like he had just prosecuted a murderer. “So, now the question is, what do we do with you?”

Mr. Morton rolled over to his filing cabinet in his delapidated, black chair and open the bottom drawer. I could faintly hear him whispering the word “Warren” repetitively as his index and middle finger flipped through all the files. At last he pulled out a rather large folder with many papers of numerous colors in it and rolled back over to the desk. He opened to file and started looking it over. I could see his tiny brown eyes scanning the pages up and down, and his lips softly moving after he flipped each page. Finally, he closed the file and looked me straight in the eye, I returned the favor.

“Courtney, I’m sorry, your record is so bad I can’t suspend you anymore. My only choice is to call the alternative school.”

“Wait, what?” I didn’t realize that this decision was so near.

“You should have known this was coming. After so many offences, it’s clear that suspension just… isn’t working. Im sorry Ms. Warren, I have no choice. A packet will be sent to your house and upon recieval you must decide which of the listed schools you will attend.”

“Well”, I couldn’t find words to express my feelings, “what do I do now?”

“Go home, rest, think, prepare for the change.”

“Umm ok.”

After that Mr. Morton dismissed me.

2

I arrived at my house at about 11:00. I was very confused about the earlier events, I hadn’t even thought about what might happened if I didn’t straighten up… I had just figured they would continue with what they were doing and I would get a free vacation out of it. It feels like I’d only been punished for my actions twice, maybe three times? I couldn’t think about it anymore and I knew my mom would be home soon, and I really didn’t feel like talking, so I went to my room, turned out my light, and slept. That was the only thing that could help right now. So I slept.